Staying Active While Aging ... Bowling at 104 ... Losing 24 Pounds in 5 Weeks ... Making Money With Art
May 30, 2007
- I hope to be working and traveling overseas for the rest of my life. In fact, one of my lifelong goals is to stay active and productive as long as I possibly can. I refuse to accept the idea that I should stop doing something I like just because I've reached an age where people usually stop doing things. That's why I so admire Randy Couture, the mixed-martial-arts champion who recently reclaimed the heavyweight title of the Ultimate Fighting Contest at the very advanced age of 44. Randy is an amazing person with an incredible work ethic. He has beaten the odds and remains extremely humble. I've met him on several occasions, and have always found him to be extremely considerate and friendly.
- Randy Couture would admire Bill Hargrove, a 104-year-old bowler from Atlanta who just qualified as a sanctioned, U.S. Bowling Congress Bowler. At a recent league game in a suburban Atlanta strip mall, he rolled three games, averaging a very respectable 93. Hargrove, who plays with a team called "Bill's Bunch," started bowling 83 years ago, in 1924. What do you plan to be doing on your 104th birthday?
- I was almost shocked when I saw BC in Paris. He had lost 24 pounds and looked amazingly fit. The last time I saw him, about five weeks ago, we had a "workout" contest. I surprised him then by outpacing him in the various events: push-ups, pull-ups, dips, chins, and sprints. But looking at him now, I would be afraid to compete with him again. I asked him what he did to lose all that weight. He has been eating pretty much like I eat (five or six small meals a day, emphasizing protein over carbohydrates) but with one significant difference. He eats all his carbohydrates at the beginning of the day. After lunch, all he eats is protein and green vegetables. This is a good eating strategy for several reasons:
1. You put calories in your body when you are most likely to burn them, rather than later in the evening when you tend to be sedentary.
2. You can't eat too many carbohydrates if you don't consume them at all during your last two or three meals.
3. Learning to live without starchy carbohydrates in the evening will break the body's need to consume them at almost every meal. Eating starch makes you hungry about two hours later. If you can battle through that feeling at, say, 2:30 p.m. (two hours after lunch) and snack on nuts, for example, it will be pretty easy to do without starch at dinner and, likewise, avoid the post-dinner, sugary treat.
4. Ultimately, this is an eating program that should be increasingly easier to maintain.
- When I started collecting art back in the 1980s, I had no idea that I was starting a hobby that would one day be worth a lot of money. I bought my first work of serious art, a small drawing by Rufino Tamayo, for $1,500. Today, it is worth at least $10,000. Several years later, I spent $35,000 on a painting by Jose Clemente Orozco. Today, it's worth at least $100,000. But it has not been my collection of Mexican and Latin American masters that saw the biggest appreciation. It's been all the abstract art I bought in the early 1990s. Pieces that I bought for $5,000 are now worth more than $50,000. And a painting by Karel Appel that I probably paid $25,000 for has just been appraised at $135,000.
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posted by M. Masterson @ 8:41 AM,
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Going Global
May 29, 2007
After a week of very productive business meetings in Paris and Rome, my head is full of new ambitions and ideas, personal and professional.
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posted by M. Masterson @ 8:37 AM,
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Get Yourself a Little Life Adventure
May 17, 2007
I want to recommend a book to you. It's called Sea Venture. It was written by Kieran Doherty, an old friend of mine.
At first glance, Sea Venture is not the sort of book you'd expect me to recommend. It's not about building wealth or improving your health or increasing your personal productivity. It is a book about a group of English adventurers in the early part of the 17th century who risked everything to win a stake in the New World.
But reading this book will improve you. It will remind you of the extraordinary things ordinary people can do if they are willing to endure pain and overcome temporary obstacles.
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posted by M. Masterson @ 8:43 AM,
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Porter Stansberry's Top Investment Books
May 15, 2007
Back in 2004, we published a list of Steve Sjuggerud's Top 10 Wealth-Building Books. Just recently, another friend whose investment acumen I admire, Porter Stansberry, published his own list of top books on investing.
Since Porter is responsible for three of the best investment advisories in the world today (Steve Sjuggerud's True Wealth, Dan Ferris's Extreme Value, and Porter's own Investment Advisory), I thought you might be interested in seeing it.
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posted by M. Masterson @ 8:50 AM,
Phoning In Updates to Your Customers
May 8, 2007
As cellphones and other mobile devices get more sophisticated, new communication channels are becoming more mobile too.
Take a vacation to Africa, snap some photos of your safari, and then send them out as instant updates to family members who are keeping tabs on you by computer. Or go to an important business seminar and update your colleagues with minute-by-minute notes on what your competition is up to.
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posted by M. Masterson @ 8:23 AM,
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Reading the Newspapers Selectively: Put Up or Shut Up
May 4, 2007
Five people responded to a recent blog entry I wrote about reading the newspaper. Three of them objected to my frustration with bad news.
"To advocate ignoring all the 'bad' things that happen in the world - from war to genocide to racism - in order to have a pleasant day, is nothing short of shocking and irresponsible!" one said. "Sorry if the world's pain is inconvenient or spoils your otherwise blissful millionaire's existence, Michael, but your determination to live a life of privilege while ignoring what goes on beyond your own borders is exactly why the U.S. is so widely resented."
I am not surprised that I got this violent reaction to what I wrote. But it's how I feel. And not just now that I have a "blissful millionaire's" life. I have always felt this way.
It has always seemed to me that reading stories about "bad things that happen in the world" was akin to rubbernecking at highway accidents. All those people who slow down to look may feel like they are being responsible in doing so, but all they are doing is tying up traffic by indulging their morbid curiosity.
There are only two responses that make sense if you pass an accident. Pull over and help - if, that is, if you have the skills and the tools to do something. Or accept the fact that your gawking is doing nothing but harm and get on with your life.
Sometimes, I admit, I do find myself reading bad news. I can't help it. But reading about problems I can't solve doesn't make it a productive use of my time. I don't delude myself into thinking that I need to read about the war in Iraq every day to be aware of it. And how many articles do you need to read about starving people to know that starvation is a major concern in our world?
Peggy Noonan, writing about the pervasive media coverage of the recent Virginia Tech shootings, had a similar reaction to being drowned by so much of it: "I thought of Thoreau. He said he didn't have to read newspapers because if you're familiar with a principle you don't have to be familiar with its numerous applications. If you know lightning hits trees, you don't have to know every time a tree is struck by lightning."
Thinking that a person who didn't read all the newspaper stories cares less is complete rubbish. As is thinking that a person who did read all of them cares more. And it's typical, I'll bet, of people who do nothing but read and talk, read and talk.
I read a study recently that said, in effect, that "socially oriented" activists - people who are very active in talking about and promoting social causes - actually contribute much less to charity than cold-hearted conservatives. That doesn't surprise me. But it's better to talk less and do more. I may not spend a lot of time reading about and talking about what's wrong with the world, but I'm sure that what I give to charity exceeds what my critics contribute, both in absolute and in relative terms.
And they didn't hear what I said. I never said that you shouldn't read troubling news. What I said was that you should recognize that it has a potentially damaging effect on your psyche - that it will numb you. But you can - and should - control what you read and what you don't read so you are not victimized by that numbness.
In other words, use your reading of the news to fuel the work you want to do in life. And that work includes all the work you do - what you do to make a living and what you do to leave the world a better place. Sometimes, you can do both.
Like my critics, I vote, but I don't think that voting is fulfilling my obligation as a person who cares about the suffering of others. Nor do I think I can relieve my conscience by contributing money. For me, the test of your charity is what specific actions you take that directly and evidently result in relieving the suffering that concerns you.
Reading about it is does nothing. Put up or shut up.
I haven't seen a study on this yet, but I will bet you that if we compared people who like to read the bad stories to people who don't, 'we'd find that the people who don't take more positive action - probably much more - than their "socially aware" counterparts.
Another one of my readers, also troubled because he misunderstood what I said, had the right idea about reading news:
"My problem with Michael's post is his emphasis on avoiding the bad news and focusing solely on the things that will make you feel good or that can be used to your financial advantage. This is so wrong."Focusing on ourselves and avoiding the difficult subjects is why we can't solve the problems facing our country, much less the world."People as a rule are ignorant of the world, and either don't know or don't care. My recommendation, pick a cause, something you're upset about, and do something. Read these stories, get pissed off and then do something about it."
I agree completely with this, with these qualifications:
- Feeling good is not bad. It is good. Feeling good doesn't mean you ignore problems. On the contrary, it means you have the energy to solve them.
- You won't feel good if all you do is read and "increase your awareness," because deep down you know you are nothing but a voyeur. Do something. Instead of making feeble gestures like voting or paying dues to the ACL, do something real and actionable and effective.
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posted by M. Masterson @ 10:39 AM,
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The Value of Higher Education
May 1, 2007
It's more important than ever to have a college education. But the best thing is to have a graduate degree. Here's why...
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posted by M. Masterson @ 9:02 AM,
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